Uncle Minch, our 17-year-old miniature collie, left us yesterday after a long illness. He only became an "uncle" in his dotage, when we acquired the Merry Thugs, our two miniature dachshunds (a.k.a. the Peewees), Posy and Gracie. He became their uncle.
     Uncle Minch had not been himself for a long time, or to put it another way, he went through a long steady fade-out. He lost interest in his beloved tennis ball years ago. About three years ago, going for walks became too much for him. We could tell because he would just lie down on the sidewalk and refuse to move. Around that time he began having epileptic seizures. He would thrash on the floor and lose control of his bowels and there was nothing anyone could do. Afterward, he would get up and rush about as though he were trying to find some part of himself that he had lost in the seizure. Watching these dreadful episodes you'd think the seizures would have killed him -- he was already pretty advanced in dog years -- but he just kept going. Steadiness was his greatest virtue.
      A few months ago, Uncle Minch began to lose interest in his food and his seizures grew more frequent. It became difficult for him to walk. He lurched about and fell down a lot. Our vet determined that there was something wrong with his kidneys. He went on a special low-protein diet and an daily iron pill. This pepped him up considerably for a couple of months. But then he wouldn't eat his special formula diet anymore and we desperately fed him things like rice "seasoned" with liverwurst.  About ten days ago we knew the end was near.
     Yesterday, my wife Jennifer made an appointment for the vet to come over after work and ease Minch out of this world. Jennifer spent much of the afternoon sitting outside in the sun with him on our little patch of grass in the garden. Gracie came over and sat with them (Posy being much pre-occupied with a de-fuzzed tennis ball, which she would carry carefully from one end of the garden to the other and back again, and guard).  Jennifer would later remark that this was the first time she had seen Minch wag his tail in months, and she wondered if, in some rapture of purported canine intuition, he was happy to be nearing his release.
      Around six the vet came. He was a young man, not yet forty, with a solemn and purposeful air. He gave Minch a sedative in the shoulder first, so he could shave his foreleg easily and find a good vein. Having done that, he asked if we were prepared to go ahead. Jennifer said, "yes." She signed some papers. The vet put the needle in and in less than a minute Minch stopped breathing. His transition was peaceful and, Jennifer would later remark, rather shockingly swift. The young vet waited a while longer and listened a second time with his stethiscope for a heartbeat, but there was none. We were all awed in the presence of death.
     A little while later, we wrapped Minch in an old coffee-colored sheet and put him in the car, with a shovel, and then we drove about thirty miles east to my in-law's weekend house in Washington County. We were driving in the opposite direction of the sun, in low golden light, on a beautiful evening. We'd had so many days of rain through May and June that the countryside almost looked jungly it was so lush. We drove out past the dairy farms and the decrepit little village of Argyle with its vacant supermarket, and then up into hills. It was a weekday and nobody was at the house.
    We buried my dog Chloe two and a half years ago in the same little apple orchard out there. Jennifer carried Minch over to the trees. The grass was unusually high and we had to wade through it. The fields and hedges were full of blackbirds energized by the approach of night. Jennifer began digging the grave, a few feet from the slate that marks Chloe's spot. I helped in the middle part, but she was clearly determined to be the main one to do the job. It was stony ground. Finally, she laid him in the hole and arranged him so that he looked as though he were comfortably asleep. We covered him up with earth and placed a large slate over him against the coyotes who have proliferated in these parts.
      He had been Jennifer's dog long before I met her, and in this very place he had been a puppy, chasing tennis balls and dashing around to prepare for the sheep he would never herd. She remembered all that now as we stood over him and she cried in big heaping sobs. When your dog dies, you lose a large piece of your own life which was connected in so many ways with the dog. You cry for yourself as much as your dog. We commended him to the care of the universe, said one last goodbye, and started home where the Peewees waited for us.